ARNULF RAINER — Linguaggio del corpo, Biennale di Venezia, 1978

Biennale di Venezia, Austrian presentation. 4-page folded pamphlet. 27 × 21 cm. Offset print on thin wove stock.

Issued for Arnulf Rainer’s contribution to the Austrian presentation at the 1978 Venice Biennale, this pamphlet condenses a body of work into a small printed support: self-representations, altered photographic images, body positions, ecstasies, entanglements, death masks. A national-pavilion handout, but also a reduced form of the work’s own logic.

The interior reproduces a sequence of Rainer’s 1970s photo-based works under Italian headings, while the reverse carries Autorappresentazioni, a compact first-person text on self-image, falsification, psychic intensification, and the instability of identity. The publication does not merely explain the work. It repeats its method in print: selection, reduction, distortion, and remainder.

The object holds a double condition: both support material and residue — a Biennale pamphlet that survives as a minor document of placement, translation, and national framing. The imposed horizontal fold across the sheet — evidently made after issue, against its intended flat format — interrupts the object’s original state but also gives it a second physical history. Not damage alone, but a further inscription of passage.

Condition: good vintage condition with visible handling wear, toning, light creasing, and a strong horizontal fold across the centre from later forced folding. Minor edge wear and soft corner wear. Structurally sound. The fold remains the defining condition note.